Willie Mae Thornton (December 11, 1926 – July 25, 1984 

Elvis Presley’s “Hound Dog” (1956) is one of the biggest and
most instantly recognizable pop songs in history. It’s a song
so closely associated with the King of Rock and Roll, in fact,
that many may mistakenly assume that it was a Presley original.
In fact, the story of the song that gave Elvis his longest-running
#1 hit (11 weeks) in the summer of 1956 began four years earlier,
when “Hound Dog” was recorded for the very first time by the
rhythm-and-blues singer Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton in
Los Angeles, California. According to Maureen Mahon, a music
professor at New York University,"the song is seen as an
important beginning of rock-and-roll, especially in its use of
the guitar as the key instrument".

Thornton was found dead at age 57 by medical personnel in a
Los Angeles boarding house on July 25, 1984. She died of heart
and liver disorders due to her longstanding alcohol abuse.

The Wizard of Oz, starring Judy Garland and featuring words
and music by E.Y. “Yip” Harburg and Harold Arlen, received
its world premiere in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin, on August
12, 1939.

The beloved characters and familiar plot points were mostly
all there in the original children’s book, from the Kansas farm
girl in shiny slippers transported to Munchkin land by a terrible
tornado, to the wicked witch, the brainless scarecrow, the
heartless tin woodsman and the cowardly lion she encounters
once she gets there.

On August 10, 1984, the action thriller Red Dawn, starring
Patrick Swayze, opened in theaters as the first movie to be
released with a PG-13 rating. The Motion Picture Association
of America (MPAA), which oversees the movie rating system,
had announced the new PG-13 category in July of that same
year.

From the Atlantic Missile Range in Cape Canaveral, Florida,
the U.S. unmanned spacecraft Explorer 6 was launched into
an orbit around the earth. The spacecraft, commonly known
as the “Paddlewheel” satellite, featured a photocell scanner
that transmitted a crude picture of the earth’s surface and
cloud cover from a distance of 17,000 miles. The photo,
received in Hawaii, took nearly 40 minutes to transmit.

Released by NASA in September, the first photograph ever
taken of the earth by a U.S. satellite (below) depicted a
crescent shape of part of the planet in sunlight. It was
Mexico, captured by Explorer 6 as it raced westward over
the earth at speeds in excess of 20,000 miles an hour. 

First satellite image of the Earth from space, taken by
Explorer 6 in 1959.

Explorer 6 Satellite (Reconstructed Replica) at the National Space Museum.

MIKE GRACIA